[ad_1]
Earlier this year, Senator David Perdue (R-GA) personally ordered his wealth advisor to sell $ 1 million in stock in a financial company before its share price cratered, The New York Times reported on Wednesday – a finding that flies in the face of Perdue’s repeated insistence that he has no contributions to his sizable investment portfolio.
The Georgia Republican’s trade history has come under scrutiny after reporting purchases and sales of shares in companies potentially affected by the pandemic. The most controversial of those sales came after closed-door Senate briefings on the spread of the coronavirus in January.
Through it all, Perdue’s office said the senator had no influence over his investment portfolio because an independent financial advisor trades the stock market without his intervention. Responding to the Daily Beast’s reporting on separate stock trades, for example, a spokesperson for Perdue said that he “does not manage his trades, they are handled by outside financial advisers without his input or prior approval. .. No lies from the liberal media. or the Democratic political groups will change this fact.
In March, when asked on Fox News about his interactions around COVID briefings, Perdue said, “Like many members of the Senate, I have an outside professional who handles my personal finances. I am not involved in everyday life. “
His office went further by telling the media that his financial advisers make every call and that “outside and independent financial advisers continue to be the only ones doing transactions.”
But that doesn’t seem to be true. On Wednesday, The Times reported that Perdue was the subject of a Justice Department investigation as it investigated possible insider trading by a number of lawmakers over their activity in investment around the spread of the coronavirus. This investigation found that an executive at an Atlanta-based company called Cardlytics, where Perdue had previously served on the board of directors, mistakenly sent Perdue a vague email in January saying changes were coming to the board. ‘business.
The Times reported that after receiving this email, Perdue contacted Robert Hutchinson, his investment advisor at Goldman Sachs, and ordered him to sell more than $ 1 million in shares in Cardlytics, or roughly $ 20. % of its holdings in the company. The FBI secured a commemoration of this conversation, according to the Times. Weeks later, the company’s stock price hit its lowest level after a management reshuffle and news of declining earnings. The timing of Perdue’s transactions protected him from significant losses.
Federal prosecutors shut down investigations into Perdue’s dealings around the coronavirus pandemic this summer, seeing no evidence that he traded on non-public information – which is against the law. Indeed, the fact that he was accidentally sent the email may have protected him legally as it would prove that he was not proactively notified.
But the discovery of evidence from the investigation that Perdue did exert influence over his wallet sheds new light on his timely transactions. And not just those surrounding the emergence of the pandemic earlier this year.
In previous years, as The Daily Beast reported, Perdue had acquired shares in a U.S. Navy subcontractor as it took control of the Senate subcommittee with jurisdiction over the Navy and then sold it as ‘he was helping to increase the entrepreneur’s activities. The senator also bought shares in an Atlanta-based debit card company after pushing to weaken industry regulation, and appeared to synchronize buying and selling around key events such as a merger, reported The Daily Beast in September.
There is no known investigation into Perdue’s pre-pandemic trades. But Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) wrote a letter to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday asking it to probe its investment in BWX Technologies, the naval contractor.
The senator sold all of his holdings of individual stocks this year after his activity came under close scrutiny by media and federal investigators.
[ad_2]
Source link